Vantage | Istanbul

From it’s founding in 11th century BC, Istanbul, the city straddling both Europe and Asia, has undergone monumental changes. Not just in name alone, but in terms of leadership, culture, and cityscape. The infrastructure here stands alongside some of the greatest architecture in the world andto be on the ground,amidst her bustling byways, highways, and streets offer a wide variety of historical sites.What of the other side, though?To answer that, we raised the bar and got a bird’s eye view of Turkey’s best and brightest, detailing the painstaking craftsmanship put into these majestic centuries old structures.

Offering high arches, domes that bubble from mosques across the horizon and aqueducts that flow beneath the surface teeming with fish, Istanbul wears its heart on its 3,000-year-old sleeve. Its history is displayed on street corners, mounted within stained glass windows and even hides in the underground. Make no mistake, there are plenty of modern areas to discover, but there’s a special kind of connection to be had while wandering through a city that’s played host to so many different walks of life. At every turn, we found stark reminders of what had been. The past resides in every nook and cranny of this old town, and its history continues to echo throughout the streets.

Minarets penetrate the modernized horizon with glorious demands of acknowledgment as its cobblestone-laden roads reflect the biography of the past onto those in its presence. Istanbul’s destiny has been to become one of the greatest cities to rise from the ashes of antiquity, and it’s done so over and over again. Though the populationtoday rivals many a metropolis primarily composed of young adults, its history dominates the scenery in a palpable reclamation of what once was, and shall forever remain, one of the oldest cities to share two continents.